Final Report Summary - CUMTAS (Customized Micro Total Analysis Systems to Study Human Phase I Metabolism)
As the current bottleneck in screening of such interactions is associated with the speed of the analytical process flow, the microsystems technology developed in the CUMTAS project may also improve the throughput of drug-drug interaction screening by enabling parallelization of multiple analytical units side by side and integration of the drug metabolising unit with other analytical unit operations, such as separation of the metabolic reaction products from each other. To overcome the often limited detection sensitivity of the microfluidic assays in comparison to current standard technologies (i.e. well-plate based fluorescence screening assays and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry), several miniaturized sensor elements including micromirrors, microlenses and electrochemical detecting elements, were developed and integrated with the microfluidic separation systems. In parallel to scientific aims, a range of new polymer-based manufacturing materials and low-cost, non-cleanroom-based manufacturing methods, as well as new enzyme immobilization strategies for both soluble and membrane-bound enzymes, were introduced to support the technological development of the microfluidic bioanalytical platforms in general terms.